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South-West Stillbirths Rise

Published
by
the Pirate FM News Team
at
7:34am 24th February 2012
(Updated 11:43am 24th February 2012)

Stillbirths in the south-west are rising.

Six out of every thousand babies are dying in the womb or before they are a month old.

But across the rest of Britain, figures are falling.

Dawn Dixon from Probus lost her son 13 years ago: "You've got all your hopes and dreams, your family, what's going to happen, you're all prepared and it's just devastating. You have to go through labour and it's all taken away from you. You leave hospital with nothing".

North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson is backing a campaign for better research.

"We have an incredible science base in this country and of course we contribute to science across the world. If we can at least start to chip away at that and discover some of the causes we can start to put things in place to deal with that"

"It may have been made a priority for a particular reason in a particular area and the resources have been invested in it and that then starts to change things. There may be other local causes, environmental factors, whatever, but that's why we need the research I think, to be able to know"

Charities Tommy's and Sands and the NHS have information on stillbirths and advice for families struggling to cope.